Gardeners Tips

New gardeners can improve the look and success rate of their new plants if they give them appropriate support. Stakes for trees, bamboo canes, metal rods or bought systems are all possible forms of support. Here are just 5 ideas.

1. Bushy perennials grow well through circular frames or netting.
2. Top heavy plants such as peonies and dahlia are suited to a Y-stake support or a grid of twine.
3. Pea sticks are useful for supporting shorter front of border plants like penstemon and some annuals.
4. Clump forming upright perennials like delphinium or Helianthus can be supported with twine or tubes of netting.
5. Runner beans and climbing beans need good support from wide ‘pea’ netting and a wigwam or line of good canes to support the weight of pods and summer breezes.

See also Supporting Role

There are several annual plants I would recommend to new gardeners who want to cover an unsightly mess but do not want permanent plants that could impede house maintenance.

1. Sweet peas give colour and scent and cover rapidly. They tend to go-over later in summer.
2. Climbing nasturtiums have bright coloured flowers and pungent leaves until the first frost.
3. Morning glory and canary creeper are half-hardy  are harder to get going but can be very brash.
4. There are many suitable perennials including various Vines and Ivys. Look around at other local gardens to see what does well before you decide on something that could become permanent.
5. Most importantly for a good show you should provide something to climb up and cling too. Trellis, horizontal wires or netting most common.

If you need more inspiration check out with Alan Titchmarsh

1. A first essential is enthusiasm and an interest in plants, flowers and growing things. You are reading this so you qualify on this first essential.
2. Know that plants require air, water and a safe home – (soil, plant pot or bit of land).
3. Seed or plant matter to start life then nourishment to continue living. Even without a gardener’s help bare soil will be colonised, mainly by unwanted weeds in my case.
4. Size ins’t important you can start to garden on a windowsill or in a plant pot.
5. I recommend some instant gratification, try acquiring a mature flowering plant or good vegetable seedlings to get you in the mood.

1. So cheap and simple a sand tray for cuttings doesn’t need a photograph. Fill a deep seed tray or box with damp horticultural sand.
2. Use your sand tray to hold small cuttings or plant snippets to help them root.
3. This method of rooting and growing increases your stock of plants for negligible cost. At that cost you do not need many rooting successes to give you a payback.
4. Silver leaved plants, perennials, even petunias can be rooted in a sand tray then grown on or be planted in the garden.
5. Use 2″-4″ young new growth cuttings and strip off the bottom leaves then plunge the bottom third in the sand. It will take a few weeks in summer and a few months in cooler weather to get root growth.

1. Lavender leaves, flowers and seed heads smell like aunty’s old perfume (and it obviously why she used lavender oil).
2. The English Lavender is the hardiest of Lavender called angistifolia
3. Loved by bees they produce stubby spikes on short stems above narrow leaves.
4. Taller billowing lavender intermedia and French or Spanish tuffted lavender flowerers are less hardy.
5. Trim or prune lavender after they have flowered. The less hardy the less you should prune.

1. Bugle is a native wild flower with a posh name Ajuga reptans.
2. Bugle flowers dark blue or purple and will grow in poor soil. That is why it is often used as ground cover or under shrubs.
3. It sends out stolons, like adventurous roots, to spread quite quickly.
4. Good varieties include Burgundy Glow and Caitlins Giant
5. Plants attract bees and are good fillers and good doers. ( To me a ‘good doer’ is a plant that produces more reward than I invest in time or cost to get it flowering)

A colony of Foxgloves not a skulk or earth as in Foxes

1. In the first year of growing from seed foxgloves produce a rosette of leaves but no flower as they are a true biennial.
2. In the second summer they produce a  spike of flowers mainly round three quarters of the circumference. After that they usually die or produce a poor plant in the third year. To compensate they produce a prolific amount of seeds.
3. Cutting off the first flower spike will encourage several smaller new flowers.
4. Self sown foxgloves tend to flower in purple shades irrespective of the parent plants.
5. As woodland plants the leaves can look a bit tatty particularly in dry spots.

For a yellow foxglove: see: Yellow Foxgloves

I am not new to gardening (I have had over 60 years exposure). Yet every year I return with fresh hope and seek out an occasional idea. As we approach 2019 I am looking for the inspiration that will lift me and the garden to new heights.

So I am going back to the basics of an absolute beginner and hope to start afresh on 1st January. Some plans are already in place with seed orders actioned and tools cleaned afresh. But first I am now going to visit our nearby RHS garden at Harlow Carr to walk the talk around a good garden, visit the plant shop with my Christmas present vouchers and return my library book on trees.

The RHS library was closed even though the website said it was open even on bank holidays. Do not believe everything you read on a website – learn by experience!  There were many interesting winter trees but sadly most name plates were missing. How can beginners learn if the RHS can’t be bothered.

This was a crystal clear flower on a Christmas Rose ( Helleborus niger) growing in a 2 foot high pot. The raised pot made it easier to see and photograph as these Hellbores tend to have flower head droop.

So that is one new inspiration – to use height in all manner of ways to enhance my garden experience and reduce my back ache.

I was lucky to get another upright flower although I cheated a bit by lifting it up with a finger.

This tree ‘Platanus orientalis’ did still have a label, it was damaged and growing into the bark. It is a better more impressive specimen than my picture shows.

Silver birch Jackmanii, I think, although I didn’t see a label or sign. The mix of straight lines and ball shaped plants was attractive.